


Strife

by smallnico



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Adventure, Gen, Multi, Post-Canon, Questing, other stuff will be added as i write more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4161012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallnico/pseuds/smallnico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rowdy and dangerous spirit won't stop harassing the children of Hecate, so Nico is put on ghostbusting duty. When the spirit departs, however, he leaves the son of Hades with an ominous message, and from there, things get a little... chaotic.</p><p>(multiple POVs to come.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strife

Nico was having an alright morning until the infamous Ghost of Cabin 20 came back.

He met up with Lou Ellen outside Cabin 20. She had her hands on her hips, and her freckly face was contorted into a frustrated scowl. Nico noted that her eye makeup was running, and everything about her from her short, dark hair to her camp clothes and skin was soaked with moisture.

"He's back," she sighed, gesturing emphatically toward the rune-carved stone of the Hecate cabin.

"Ampelios?” Nico asked, to which Lou Ellen’s response was a wry smile and a nod.

He gave the building a once-over. At least nothing _seemed_ to be broken this time. During Ampelios's last visit, he had somehow managed to hurl a book at the wall hard enough to scratch one of the magical wards, which in turn gave Cabin 18 a brand-new, unwelcome lava moat. It took two weeks to fix. The Hebe campers all had to cram into the Hermes cabin, to nobody’s excitement or pleasure.

Nico wrenched himself out of the thought. Lou was talking again.

"I thought you said you _banished_ him," she said.

"I did. I'm sure I did," Nico muttered. "I'm as confused as you are. What's he up to this time?"

Lou Ellen shrugged and offered Nico the cabin door.

"See for yourself."

Nico peered inside and immediately felt even more confused.

"What in the-"

"I know."

The entire building, or at least what little of it Nico could actually see, was filled with dense white fog. It curled out of the open door in tendrils like tentacles, but the second it came into contact with the outside air, it turned around and resumed gagging the Hecate cabin. Inside, Nico could hear plenty of cursing and very wet coughing.

"It's mist," Lou Ellen said.

"Then why can I see it?" Nico asked.

"Not _Mist_ mist. _Regular_ mist. The mist you get in Frisco, or anywhere the air is colder than the water. Fog. Really low-hanging clouds. Haze. Mist."

Nico stuck his hand inside experimentally. The cloud was definitely physical, and Nico was surprised at how warm it was – like sticking his hand into a basin of bathwater. When he withdrew it, his fingers were dotted with condensation.

"Huh."

"We can't get rid of it, with magic or without," Lou Ellen sighed. "We’ve tried. Old Cranky Mc _Magic-is-Sin_ -Face must've enchanted it or something, the hypocrite. It won't spill outside when we open the doors and windows, and it won't dissipate in the sun.”

"So it's _magical_ normal mist?" Nico asked, standing away from the door, picking at his newly-dampened shirt. "Summoned by a viciously anti-magic ghost."

"Now you're getting it."

Lou Ellen turned back to face the cabin and sighed.

“I’ve had enough of that guy. He comes around, wreaks havoc, scares the kids, and leaves. I really thought he was gone for good last time. Please get him to _go away_. We don’t need another lava incident.”

“I have to go in there?”

"I hope you're okay with getting wet," she said.

"I hate getting wet," Nico responded as he approached the door and stepped inside.

 

Breathing the hot, swampy, moisture-heavy air was difficult. It took seconds for Nico to double over in a coughing fit. He couldn’t see a thing. He was standing inside an opaque white void.

"Ampelios!" he yelled.

"Go away!" the ghost shouted in reply, sounding not at all hindered by the mist in the air. "Nasty, nasty Underworld boy! Agent of Hades! I won't go back! I will _never_ go back!"

"You're dead," Nico told the ghost. "Your place is the Underworld. Now go back, before I have to _drag you there myself_!"

"Nico?" one of the Hecate kids asked. He recognized her voice. Nanette Cain, the second-in-command. "Is Lou okay? Did she manage to find the door?"

"Yeah," Nico answered quickly. "She's fine. She's waiting outside."

He coughed again.

"Ampelios!" he said again. "What did you do this time?"

"Nasty, nasty Underworld kin! Friend of witches! Filthy witches!"

"Fuck you!" called another Hecate camper, his voice muffled.

"What did you do?" Nico repeated, putting as much of his power over the dead into his voice as he could. The cabin went silent.

"A punishment!” Ampelios cried, his voice triumphant. “A punishment for the filthy, disgusting witches! Children of the magic goddess, take a bath! Bathe and be cleansed by your own little tricks of the eyes! Your precious mother won't be able to help you here!"

The fog thickened and pressed, and Nico started finding it harder and harder to breathe. It was now more like inhaling boiling liquid than anything productive. He could hear the other demigods inside choking as gasping for air filled their lungs with water.

“How can we dispel it?” he asked the ghost, who started cackling gleefully. Nico started to feel life energy all around the cabin draining, and he was pushed along by a sudden sense of extreme urgency. This ghost was a menace. Ampelios had started off as a lost soul, an annoyance, but now he was trying to kill.

“Only fire can dispel the mist,” Ampelios giggled. “Fire! But not magical fire, oh no. The mist _suffocates_ all magic. Real, genuine fire. Like the stakes at Salem!”

“You _miserable little_ –” Nanette started to say, before she was cut off by another bout of ragged, wet coughing.

“And if you light a fire in the mist, it spreads, and _it spreads_ …”

Nico heard a few more Hecate campers cry out indignantly. He couldn’t blame them. He had met some of the Witch Hunt ghosts the last time he stopped by Salem, Massachusetts. They were resentful and bitter, so a lot of them roamed the city looking for justice. Not all of them were demigods, but a good amount were. All the others were either followers of Hecate, or innocent people condemned to die, tied to a wooden stake and burned, or drowned in really stupid, ill-conceived trials.

The irony of the situation didn’t escape him.

“Ah, yes, the Salem witch trials. One of the best chapters in history! I was around to see it! I watched others, others like you be cleansed of magic and trickery!! Wipe the smiles off your horrible little…”

“Enough!” Nico shouted. He should’ve realized it sooner. Ampelios was back because he naturally wouldn’t stay in the Underworld. It wasn’t his place. He wasn’t really a ghost. That… _really_ didn’t bode well. “Ampelios! You’re dead! You died long ago. You’re a _mania_. Get rid of the fog before I destroy you.”

He had hoped that would be enough to convince the _mania_ to at least get up in his face. It didn’t work.

“Only fire, nasty Underworld boy! Only fire!”

Nico felt life energy draining from everyone in the cabin. He was also starting to feel a bit light-headed. He heard campers start to hit the floor with several dull thudding sounds. They were unconscious, he noted. Nobody was dead. Yet. He could vaguely hear Lou Ellen outside, calling his name and asking what was going on, threatening to come back inside.

“Show yourself,” he urged, forcing a good portion of his energy into the order. Ampelios was a _mania_ , but he was still a spirit. Nico knew that if he focused hard enough, he could get him to do his bidding. The only problem was focusing.

Ampelios shimmered into existence before him. His form was difficult to make out in the mist – like everything was, really – but Nico could make out the eyes well enough. He looked straight into them.

Nico saw a burning hatred. Bloodlust so intense he wanted to smash something. He knew Ampelios hated magic, it was self-evident enough _without_ his constant screaming fits about how much he hated magic; this, however, was extreme. It was extreme even for a mania. That was deeply troubling.

“Be gone.”

“Then who, nasty Underworld boy, would clean up this mess? You?”

The fog was starting to close around his throat like hands. He couldn’t breathe. He was playing the long odds here, but if Nico was right... a spell couldn't sustain itself if its caster was gone. Maybe the fog would still be there, but if Ampelios weren’t around to keep gathering it in the cabin…

“Be gone, Ampelios. _Now_.”

Nico choked out the words and watched as the _mania_ disappeared in a blinding flash of violet light.

“You cannot fight off the spirit of strife.” Nico shuddered. It was like Ampelios’s dead mouth was whispering right into his ear. The voice cackled. “Your will is a powerful weapon, Underworld kin, but it won’t be enough...”

“ _GO!_ ” he yelled, feeling the pull of Tartarus as the _mania_ was swallowed into the pit.

Instantly, the fog began to thin out with a tremendous wheeze. Nico swore that he could hear the Hecate cabin walls creak and settle, despite being solid stone.

Finally, he could breathe again, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Then, he coughed up some water, which splattered onto the floor.

Everything in the cabin was drenched, from the beds, books, and belongings to the people, most of whom lay collapsed on the floor. A couple more resilient demigods stood and inhaled the humid air, wheezing, and glancing at Nico and around the room with wild looks in their eyes.

Nico was soaked to the bone. His hair hung over his eyes and stuck to his cheeks like it’d been glued in place. His throat and lungs were burning.

“Everyone alright?” he managed.

Lou Ellen was at his side suddenly, looking around at her siblings with concern.

“The mist started spilling out the door. You broke the enchantment,” she told Nico.

“It broke on its own after Ampelios left, and not a moment too soon,” he muttered.

“What – Oh my gods!” she cried, panic setting in. “They’re not…”

“Not dead, no,” Nico said. “They’re probably going to be woozy when they wake up, though.”

“Lou,” one of her brothers, Candace, said with a voice that sounded like a bellows peppered with holes. “Lou, he tried to kill us. We didn’t know if you got out.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” she told him. “We need to get the others to the infirmary. Marla, take Freddie and Theo. I’ve got Nanette. Bastian, Candace, get Lyon and Jeremy. Nico?”

“Uh?”

“Thank you,” Lou Ellen said.

“It was nothing,” he replied. Lou nodded and turned her attention back to her cabin.

“Gods, what a nightmare. What’d we do to deserve this?”

“Can I help with anything else?” Nico offered, making his way toward the door.

“You’ve done a lot. We’ll be fine,” said Bastian from underneath one of his siblings.

Nico shrugged and left the cabin.

 

The chill and the thinness of the outside air immediately made Nico feel like his throat had frozen solid. He resisted the urge to cough again. His lungs had suffered enough for one day.

The front door of Cabin 20 looked like it was steaming as the fog streamed out into the common grounds. The children of Hecate followed Nico out. As a group, they looked miserable, like they’d been dropped in the canoe lake.

Travis Stoll from Hermes ran by, before slowing down and stopping in front of the group with a confused look on his elfish face.

“Uh…” he began.

“Don’t ask,” Lou Ellen muttered.

“Was it that dumb ghost again?” Travis asked, against orders. Lou huffed a sigh and nodded.

“Not a ghost,” Nico corrected. “Just… for the record. It was a _mania_. A really intense one, too – sort of like a ghost, but instead of being a person, it’s made of a person’s dying obsession.”

“Ah. I’ve heard of those.”

“It should be gone now, anyway.”

“Good to know,” Travis said. “Hey, wait. If this was a _mania_ , that’s a type of monster, right?”

“Yes.”

“But that means someone must’a summoned it,” Marla said in her heavy Boston accent.

“If I _find_ whoever summoned that prick, I’m going to kill them,” Lou Ellen growled. “I’ll go to Chiron later to request an emergency meeting of the counselors. But in the meantime, we have other things to worry about. Travis, please let the infirmary cast know we’re coming?”

Her tone didn’t leave any room for negotiation. Travis ran ahead of them toward the infirmary.

Nico hadn’t known Lou Ellen for very long, but this was about the angriest he’d ever seen the daughter of Hecate. She was impish, but she was typically level-headed - Nico could see her jaw clench and he could see the hardness in her expression that he knew meant she was trying to swallow the urge to lash out. He couldn't help but admire her patience. She was keeping it together remarkably well for someone whose cabin was violated and whose extended family had almost died, not to mention the fact that it could’ve been all for the sake of a prank. 

Then again, it could also have been a legitimate attempt on their lives. Nico decided not to dwell on that option, or bring it up. It couldn’t have been right, anyway. The children of Hecate were like him, they were the odd ones in Camp Half-Blood, but he didn’t think anyone _hated_ them. Definitely not enough to do something like this.

“You coming?” Lou sighed, looking to Nico with tired eyes.

He snapped out of his own thoughts. “Coming?”

“To the sick house,” she explained, hefting Nanette further over her shoulder.

“No, I’m fine,” Nico replied. “You go ahead.”

“You sure? You sound like someone conjured a frog into your throat.”

“I’m sure. Go.”

Nanette stirred, and started to cough up water all over Lou Ellen’s shirt. Lou groaned.

“Aw, Nan. Now I have to change even more.”

Nanette didn’t reply, which made sense. Instead, Lou Ellen continued carrying her like a large, wet ragdoll to the infirmary. It was ten in the morning, and Nico was officially out of things to do. He was exhausted and there was nothing to distract him from it, so he started to walk and think.

Nico had _stubborned_ his way through more than one difficult situation, but banishing the _mania_ had come close to totalling him like only a few other things had ever done. It was much, _much_ harder than it should’ve been, and yet he still had the nagging sensation that he’d been let off easy.

What Ampelios had said bothered him, too. Exactly what sort of _strife_ was he talking about? Nico tried to recall any other obscure Olympian wars that were said to have occurred after the Titan War and the Giant War ended, but he drew a blank. That was just as well. He’d had enough of mythological wars, quite frankly, but without the spirit of the Oracle at Delphi, it was impossible to tell.

He made a mental note to visit Camp Jupiter as soon as he could. Maybe Rachel and the Romans had had enough luck transcribing enough of the Sibylline Books to come up with something. Besides, it’d been a while since he’d seen Hazel and Reyna, and he missed them.

In the meantime, Nico’s head hurt. He could really use a nap.

He coughed up some more moisture and trudged his way over to the Hades cabin.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this is mostly a doodle for now. I have bigger plans for the story and I'll edit the descriptive stuff accordingly as I write chapters! In the meantime, though, I hope you enjoy a sample of my typical fanfic niche: Nico di Angelo Doing Things.


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